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      <h1><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif">Starkick Traders FAQ</font></h1>
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      <h2>&nbsp;</h2>
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      <P><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><img src="images/SOFA.jpg" width="240" height="180" align="right"></font></P>
      <P><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><a href="http://www.berigames.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=47">There 
        is a newer FAQ on the Fourms.</a> Please read it!</font></P>
      <P><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif">Please submit questions 
        to <a href="mailto:sktfaq@berigames.com">sktfaq@berigames.com</a> or send 
        them using the Feedback in the game.</font></P>
      <h2><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif">Table of Contents: 
        </font></h2>
      <ol>
        <li><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><a href="faq.html#1">How 
          do I upgrade to a tech level one base?</a></font></li>
        <li><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><a href="faq.html#2">What 
          counts towards getting points? And how are those factors weighted? </a></font></li>
        <li><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><a href="faq.html#3">How 
          are a planets shields and beam weapons determined? </a></font></li>
        <li><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><a href="faq.html#4">How 
          does a player determine the strength of planetary and sector defenses?</a></font></li>
        <li><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><a href="faq.html#5">So, 
          how many &quot;beams&quot; do you get and how much damage does a torpedo 
          do?</a></font></li>
        <li><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><a href="faq.html#6">Do 
          I need to keep energy on my ship in order for it to be able to defend 
          itself?</a></font></li>
        <li><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><a href="faq.html#7">Why 
          don't my shields help against sector fighters?</a></font></li>
        <li><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"> <a href="faq.html#8">What 
          do sector mines do?</a> <br>
          </font></li>
        <li><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"> <a href="faq.html#9">If 
          mines and fighters in sector defenses are marked for toll, how is that 
          toll collected? </a><br>
          </font></li>
        <li><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><a href="faq.html#10">My 
          planet was scanned but no toll was collected, I assume that he cloaked 
          his way in but how strong to I have to be to detect his ship under cloaking? 
          </a><br>
          </font></li>
        <li><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><a href="faq.html#11">If 
          a player chooses to attack a planet will the sector defenses kick in 
          even if they are marked for toll? </a><br>
          </font></li>
        <li><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><a href="faq.html#12">What 
          to the white bars stand for underneath the planets? </a><br>
          </font></li>
        <li><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><a href="faq.html#13">What 
          does a Last Seen Ship Device do? </a><br>
          </font></li>
        <li><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><a href="faq.html#14">How 
          does SOFA damage get calculated? </a><br>
          </font></li>
        <li><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><a href="faq.html#15">I 
          scanned a ship/planet and saw that it was smaller than mine, attacked 
          and I blew up! What's going on? </a><br>
          </font></li>
        <li><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><a href="faq.html#16">Do 
          bounties or fines on my head affect my score? </a><br>
          </font></li>
        <li><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><a href="faq.html#17">The 
          Federation just fined me! What's that all about? </a><br>
          </font></li>
        <li><a href="faq.html#18"><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif">If 
          I destroy a ship with credits on it do we get those credits or do those 
          credits get blown up too? </font></a><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><br>
          </font></li>
        <li><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><a href="faq.html#19">Does 
          money accrue interest while on your ship? If so at what rate? </a><br>
          </font></li>
        <li><a href="faq.html#20"><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif">In 
          the calculation of points do goods and other commodities like ore and 
          organics count more than fighters and torpedoes? </font></a><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><br>
          </font></li>
        <li><a href="faq.html#21"><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif">If 
          someone comes on an attack vector but I do not want to outmanuever and 
          I want to engage can I do that? </font></a><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><br>
          </font></li>
        <li><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"> <a href="faq.html#22">How 
          can I avoid burning turns when doing a traderoute and the port fills 
          up a planet runs out of commodities? </a></font></li>
      </ol>
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      <p><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><a name="1"></a><b>Q1. 
        How do I upgrade to a tech level one base? </b><br>
        A. To add a base to a planet make sure you have 10,000 organics, ore and 
        goods and 10 million credits and then choose &quot;Build A Base&quot; 
        from the planet menu. A base enables: <br>
        a) Storage of &gt; 10 million credits <br>
        b) Adds 1 level to all of the planet's stats: torps, beams, shields and 
        cloak. <br>
        A base is valued at 10 million credits for score purposes. <br>
        </font></p>
      <p><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><a name="2"></a><b>Q2. 
        What counts towards getting points? And how are those factors weighted? 
        </b><br>
        A. Your score is totally dependent on your net worth. Everything is counted: 
        you ship value as a sum of its market value upgrades, money in the bank, 
        commodities and colonists on your planets, etc. Any loans you have are 
        deducted from what you own and then the grand total is square rooted. 
        That gives your score. <br>
        To grow your score looks for areas where you can grow your wealth without 
        having to spend turns doing so. This include: putting colonists on planets 
        and telling them to make things, putting money in the bank or on a planet 
        and letting it grow interest, making your commodities available for sale 
        to traveling furangee (next game), etc. </font></p>
      <p><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><a name="3"></a><b>Q3. 
        How are a planets shields and beam weapons determined? </b><br>
        A. All of you planets stats are derived from your ship stats. If you have 
        a base on the planet they are +1 what you have on your ship. If your ship 
        is destroyed then your planets become sitting ducks. Conversely, if you 
        see a planet under attack you don't necessarily have to go there to defend 
        it, just buy some more beams, torps, cloak or shields for your ship. </font></p>
      <p><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><b><a name="4"></a>Q4. 
        How does a player determine the strength of planetary and sector defenses? 
        In that for example if I have a million fighters in my sector what level 
        of beam weapons will it take to destroy all of my fighters? Do fighters 
        fight on a one to one basis? If I have 500,000 fighters in my sector then 
        would a ship have to have 500,000 to beat me? </b><br>
        A. If a ship decides to take on sector fighters it will unleash all of 
        its weaponry on them, not just its fighters. Beams hit first, then torps, 
        then fighters. If there are any fighters left in the sector they hit the 
        ship's armor. If the ship's armor goes to zero or less the ship blows 
        up. <br>
        To work out how many fighters you can destroy you need to do a calculation 
        based on your weaponry stats. We are planning to put in a combat computer 
        to help with this calculation (see another posting) but in the meantime 
        you will have to use a trusty calculator, a handy spreadsheet, the table 
        below, or guess! </font></p>
      <p><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><b><a name="5"></a>Q5. 
        So, how many &quot;beams&quot; do you get and how much damage does a torpedo 
        do? </b><br>
        A. For every upgrade except two of them you get (1.5 ^ level) * 100 of 
        that thing. So for level 10 beams you will get 5767 beam shots. For level 
        10 shields you will be able to absorb 5767 beam shots. See the table below 
        for the calculations from level 10 to level 25. <br>
        The two components that do not follow this calculation are torpedoes and 
        energy. Although you can stock up on lots of torpedoes, in any one battle 
        you can only fire off 2% of your maximum capability, however, each torpedo 
        does 20 times the damage of a laser beam (one torp can take out 20 fighters). 
        In other words, torpedoes are 20% as effective as laser beams. Why have 
        them then? Well, when you take on a planet you can only take out up to 
        1/2 of the planet's fighters with beams, the rest have to be taken out 
        using torps. also, you might have a lot of them because you forgot to 
        tell your colonists to stop making them. <br>
        Power on the other hand is easy to store and so for every upgrade, you 
        get 5 times as much capacity. This means you do not have to keep your 
        power at the same level as your beams and shields to keep them up to 100% 
        effectiveness. It can trail a little behind if you like. </font></p>
      <p><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><b>Upgrade capacity 
        table: <br>
        </b> </font></p>
      <pre><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif">Level     Capacity 
    10     5,767 
    11     8,650 
    12     12,975 
    13     19,462 
    14     29,193 
    15     43,789 
    16     65,684 
    17     98,526 
    18     147,789 
    19     221,684 
    20     332,526 
    21     498,789 
    22     748,183 
    23     1,122,274 
    24     1,683,411 
    25     2,525,117 
         </font></pre>
      <p><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><b><a name="6"></a>Q6. 
        Do I need to keep energy on my ship in order for it to be able to defend 
        itself? I read something about this on the forum but did not quite understand 
        it. </b><br>
        A. Yes! If you do not have energy on board ship, your beams and shields 
        are useless. Make sure you are tanked up with energy if you are going 
        into a fight. If you have excess energy you will be able to go through 
        multiple fights without having to refuel. <br>
        Your energy banks are dedicated half to beams and half to shields so make 
        sure you have enough to go around. Energy will NOT be diverted to beams 
        when attacking. </font></p>
      <p><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><b><a name="7"></a>Q7. 
        Why don't my shields help against sector fighters? </b><br>
        A. Shields protect against beams ONLY. They absorb beams 1 for 1. Armor 
        protects against fighters, make sure you have enough! </font></p>
      <p><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><b><a name="8"></a>Q8. 
        What do sector mines do?</b> <br>
        A. If a ship enters a sector and fails to cloak it will hit a portion 
        of the mines. If it has mine defectors they will absorb the impacts one 
        for one. If the mine deflectors run out, armor takes over, if armor runs 
        out, its bye, bye baby! <br>
        Mines are also useful for tagging sectors to see if people go there or 
        not. You only need to place one mine in a sector to get a tell tale email... 
        <br>
        Mines are torpedoes that you let hang in space. </font></p>
      <p><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><b><a name="9"></a>Q9. 
        If mines and fighters in sector defenses are marked for toll, how is that 
        toll collected? </b><br>
        A. When a player tries to enter a sector with toll fighters they will 
        ask for a toll, if the player agrees to pay the toll it will immediately 
        go to the fighter owner&#146;s ship account. <br>
        Mines are NEVER toll even though it looks like they can be (this will 
        be cleared up in a future version of the game). When you enter a sector 
        anywhere from 5% to 100% of the mines can hit your ship. If you have paid 
        the toll though, mines will not activate. </font></p>
      <p><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><b><a name="10"></a>Q10. 
        My planet was scanned but no toll was collected, I assume that he cloaked 
        his way in but how strong to I have to be to detect his ship under cloaking?</b> 
        <br>
        A. How well you detect in this circumstance or any other is based on how 
        strong your sensors are. If you have higher sensors than his cloak you 
        are much more likely to detect the intruder. </font></p>
      <p><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><b><a name="11"></a>Q11. 
        If a player chooses to attack a planet will the sector defenses kick in 
        even if they are marked for toll?</b> <br>
        A. No, they only defend the sector not planets. They will kick in if they 
        or the mines are attacked though. </font></p>
      <p><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><b><a name="12"></a>Q12. 
        What to the white bars stand for underneath the planets? <br>
        </b>A. This has confused so many people that we&#146;re thinking about 
        removing them! They are supposed to be scan bars that get more white the 
        bigger the planet but they are superfluous really so they will probably 
        go soon! </font></p>
      <p><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><b><a name="13"></a>Q13. 
        What does a Last Seen Ship Device do? <br>
        </b>A. It adds to your long range scan capabilities. If you buy one and 
        then do a long range scan it will show you the last ship that visited 
        a sector. It's quite clever actually because your own movement does not 
        affect it. It's useful for tracking people down and seeing where they 
        operate. </font></p>
      <p><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><b><a name="14"></a>Q14. 
        How does SOFA damage get calculated? <br>
        </b>A. In SOFA (Sub-Orbital Fighter Attack) you use your on-board fighters 
        to attack/bomb a planet. SOFA bombing is less effective if you are bigger 
        on average than your adversary though - only 50% of your fighters will 
        ever have a chance as opposed to 100% if you are smaller. This is because 
        the planet colonists can see you coming and get ready with defenses. <br>
        There are other things to consider when SOFA bombing. Firstly, if <br>
        the defender has better Torps or Beams than you then you will have to 
        battle them down to zero before you can touch his fighters. This means 
        he will be able to defend against you using those until his energy is 
        zero and his torps are zero. Once they are zero his fighters will kick 
        in. If you have better beams and torps than he does then actually those 
        defenses don't kick in and it's just fighter against fighter. We're still 
        considering if this really makes sense but that's the way it is right 
        now. So the advice is, if you find yourself slogging away trying to deplete 
        torps and energy, upgrade your torps and beams and try again. Similarly, 
        if you are a defender, you might want to beef up beams and torps as much 
        as manufacture fighters on you planet. </font></p>
      <p><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><b><a name="15"></a>Q15. 
        I scanned a ship/planet and saw that it was smaller than mine, attacked 
        and I blew up! What's going on? </b><br>
        A: Basically, your sensors are not good enough to get a true reading! 
        There is an error to scans based on how good your sensors are vs. a target's 
        cloak. Rescanning will NOT help, it's not a random error, it is the same 
        every time and it affects all the numbers you get equally. This also affects 
        planets too. (This is why we think people are killing themselves on planets 
        so much because they are over trusting the numbers of a scan). If you 
        scan and get a reading other than ??? don't trust it completely unless 
        you have very good sensors compared to the target's cloak. So the take 
        away is, spend money on sensors if you want to make sure and maybe compare 
        with team mate scans to check. Or, just take it as an under-reading and 
        play on the safe side. Certainly, if you get ???'s a lot then your sensors 
        are rubbish and need upgrading because all they are giving you are their 
        best guess. </font></p>
      <p><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><b><a name="16"></a>Q16. 
        Do bounties on my head affect my score? </b><br>
        A. No. Bounties placed on you do not directly affect you score. </font></p>
      <p><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><b><a name="17"></a>Q17. 
        The Federation just fined me! What's that all about? </b><br>
        A. The Federation fines anyone who attacks a player significantly smaller 
        than themselves (&lt;10% score). They also prevent you from using Special 
        Ports and place you on the Universe Most Wanted list and anyone who blows 
        up your ship will get triple salvage value from it, i.e., 30% to 60% of 
        its value! To stop the bountyhunters and to gain access to special ports 
        again you have to pay the Federation the fine, in cash, all at once. </font></p>
      <p><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><b><a name="18"></a>Q18. 
        If I destroy a ship with credits on it do we get those credits or do those 
        credits get blown up too? </b><br>
        A. You do not get the credits. Those go with the ship's owner; either 
        on his or her escape pod or to their grave! You can get a big cash payout 
        however if you are lucky to salvage enough of their ship, up to 20% of 
        the ship's value. </font></p>
      <p><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><b><a name="19"></a>Q19. 
        Does money accrue interest while on your ship? If so at what rate? </b><br>
        A. No, money only accrues interest on a planet or in the IGB. Planets 
        give the best interest. </font></p>
      <p><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><b><a name="20"></a>Q20. 
        In the calculation of points do good and other commodities like ore and 
        organics count more than fighters and torpedoes? </b><br>
        A. Commodities are valued at 1 credit if they are on a planet, everything 
        else is valued at their cost price. So figs and torps are nominally worth 
        more to your score, but ore and goods could be worth much more if you 
        trade them. </font></p>
      <p><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><b><a name="21"></a>Q21. 
        If someone comes on an attack vector but I do not want to outmanuever 
        and I want to engage can I do that? </b><br>
        A. Not right now, although that's an option we might add. You can make 
        your EWD useless by having an average tech of 25 or greater, it'll be 
        pretty useless close to that too or if you are on a planet when attacked 
        you will always engage. You can't stop your engines or piloting skills 
        from being good. These protections really give YOU the choice as to when 
        you want to pick a fight. </font></p>
      <p><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><b><a name="22"></a>Q22. 
        How can I avoid burning turns when doing a traderoute and the port fills 
        up a planet runs out of commodities? </b><br>
        A. Don't worry, the trade route computer will stop trade routes automatically 
        UNLESS you are able to scoop and sell energy at each end of the route.</font></p>
      <p><font face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif"><b><a name="23"></a>Q23. 
        I just died and now I've lost everything! No planets no nothing! Help!</b><br>
        A. Don't worry (too much). all your planets still exist - they are just 
        marked as 'unowned'. You need to quickly get back to them and claim them 
        before anyone else gets them. Try using a warp editor to make a direct 
        path to where your planets were.</font></p>
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